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MANILA, Philippines – The government will not impose tougher restrictions on communities for now, following the discovery of the UK’s most transmissible variant of coronavirus in the country, officials said Thursday.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said that an escalation of the general quarantine of the community would depend on an increase in the average daily attack rates, the growth rate of two weeks and the use of the hospital and care capacity system. medical.
“As of now, we still don’t have that kind of signal to raise the current community quarantine. [status]”Duque said at a press conference.
But it won’t hurt if local governments exercise their power to impose limited closures if there is an increase in cases in their communities, he added.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque also noted that quarantine classifications are established on a monthly basis by the Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and said that any change in these will depend on the two-week attack rate and the capacity to care. review.
Travel ban
“There is a possibility that more people will get sick because the new variant is more contagious. But if they would not be hospitalized because their cases are mild, it is possible that the quarantine restrictions will not change, “said Roque.
The Department of Health (DOH) confirmed on Wednesday that the British variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 had been detected in a Filipino who recently traveled to the United Arab Emirates.
Duque said he had recommended the inclusion of the United Arab Emirates in the list of countries subject to travel restrictions in the Philippines.
The government has banned foreigners from countries that have reported cases of variants of COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, from the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Duque explained that the UAE was not included on the travel ban list previously because they had not reported cases of the UK variant.
The DOH had no basis to say that the variant was present in the United Arab Emirates, it said.
“But now we have the evidence to tell them, ‘Now you have the UK variant,'” he said.
Duque said he had ordered health personnel to visit the other passengers on the Emirates flight that brought the patient with the UK variant who had not responded to contact tracing calls.
DOH has been trying to track the movements of the other passengers on the Emirates flight, he said.
“I have given the order to visit people who are not answering the phone but whose addresses are available. They will visit them physically, ”he said.
Active transmission in Metro
Octa’s research group reported Thursday that there was now active transmission of the COVID-19 virus in Metro Manila, after the bug’s reproduction rate increased in December.
Octa’s Butch Ong said the virus reproduction rate in Metro Manila was now 1.10 to 1.17, down from Dec. 1.
“This means that it is now being actively broadcast in the community,” Ong told a news conference.
He said the reproduction rate in December was below 1 because the testing labs were operating at only 45 percent of capacity.
Now they have fully resumed their operations, and this means that the virus’s reproduction rate more reflects the real situation, Ong said.
In Metro Manila, he said, the cities that have reported an increase in cases are Quezon City, Manila, Pasig, Parañaque and Marikina.
Outside the metropolis, he said, increases have been reported in Davao del Sur, Isabela, Quezon, Misamis Oriental, Pangasinan, Agusan del Sur, Negros Oriental, Cebu City and Zamboanga del Sur.
However, Ong said he could not say whether the increases meant that coronavirus infections had reached a “level of increase.”
New infections
On Thursday, the DOH recorded an additional 1,912 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 494,605.
He said 746 more patients had recovered, bringing the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 459,252. But the death toll rose to 9,739 with the death of 40 more patients.
Deaths and recoveries left the country with 25,614 active cases, of which 85 percent were mild, 6.4 percent asymptomatic, 0.48 percent moderate, 2.9 percent severe, and 5.2 percent critical. —WITH REPORT FROM PATRICIA DENISE M. CHIU
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